Asia-Pacific

President Barack Obama’s much-heralded «Pivot to Asia» lies in tatters as European and Asian «allies» of the United States march away from the heavily U.S.-influenced Asian Development Bank (ADB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as the American-led World Bank, to join China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)... The world is recognizing that the era of «Pax Americana» is now over. Taking its place is a new «Pax Sinica» bolstered by support from the BRICS alliance and China’s new partners in the AIIB and New Development Bank.

In many ways, Mongolia’s role in international relations and the global economy is determined by its location in the heart of Asia, the country’s impressive mineral reserves (copper, coal, molybdenum, tin, tungsten and gold), its common border with two Euroasian giants – Russia and China, and the fact that Mongolia is a natural transport link in the construction of overland routes between Europe and the Asia-Pacific Region as alternatives to the sea route through the Suez Canal...

The recent revelations from the documents provided by National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden that the NSA’s two Pacific partners, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) conduct wholesale eavesdropping on the communications of the island nations of the Pacific may not be “news” but the reaction to the surveillance by regional leaders points to the neo-colonialism practiced by the NSA’s FIVE EYES intelligence partners...

...In the 1997-1998 the countries of South East Asia had to counter the activities of financial speculators acting in accordance with the prescriptions of the International Monetary Fund. They resorted to currency interventions spending the money taken from currency reserves. With the reserves depleted they turned to world lenders. There they had the International Monetary Fund with its sickly and threadbare Washington consensus dragging them into a vicious circle. All of a sudden one country got out of it. Malaysia led by Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad’ introduced capital controls. It banned currency operations related to cross border capital flows. The measure was a direct challenge to the International Monetary Fund and its backroom owners...

The battle for eco-friendly China will be in focus of the fifth generation of Chinese leaders... While green modernization takes place inside China the government launches a vibrant diplomatic offensive aimed at efficient resolution of global problems related to climate change. This policy has broad support in Europe... The US Republicans begin to get exasperated by China’s successes. It’s not only the desire to attack Democrats on a major issue. The shale revolution that boosts the US economy is too unstable because of ecological problems, something they don’t like to talk about in America. Are they afraid of Greenpeace?

...Until Washington turns away from a paradigm based on regime change in the DPRK as soon as possible and at any cost, the door leading toward an improved relationship between the two Koreas will quickly begin to close. And yet it is the Koreans themselves who will have the last word in determining the fate of their divided people...

"What is happening is a concerted effort by the emerging powers to construct parallel multilateral architectures that route around the liberal order, and will likely reshape international politics and economics in fundamental ways."

The governments of North and South Korea continue to repeat the mantra that they are committed to the idea of unifying their divided people. But as years go by, the tension between Seoul and Pyongyang continues, and there is no progress toward achieving that objective. According to public opinion polls, most South Koreans under the age of 40 are not interested in the unification of the peninsula. Although there is no public discussion, this critically important sector of the South Korean society is against any such plans. Decades have passed since the country was partitioned. The number of families separated by the demilitarized zone (DMZ) has dwindled and emotions have cooled. Many young people in the South increasingly see North Korea as a foreign country...

The US is set to roll out a 50th anniversary commemoration of the Vietnam War... The United States Vietnam War Commemoration website omits something important – the history of post-war protest movement that hit the streets of US cities in the 1960-1970s. Nothing is said about the persecution of anti-war activists many of whom were war vets... According to Marjorie Cohn, a professor of law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, San Diego, California, and a former President of the National Lawyers Guild, one of the most shameful legacies of the Vietnam War is the US military's use of the deadly defoliant Agent Orange, dioxin... War crimes - such as the My Lai (part of Song My village located in South Vietnam's Quang Ngai Province) massacre - were common. In 1968, US soldiers slaughtered 500 unarmed old men, women and children aged from 1 to 82 years old in the Vietnamese village of My Lai...

As President Obama heads to Beijing for the APEC summ it next week , Harry J. Kazianis , Managing Editor of the National Interest , spoke with Dr. Ely R atner , a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security to discuss U.S.-Chinese relations, China-Japan relations, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and more.

...The ownership capital of the US Federal Reserve in relation to the value on the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is just 1.3 per cent. And this symbolic capital is not represented by gold or anything else of actual value, but by electronic records. It is clichéd financial black magic. From the point of view of the capital adequacy ratios developed by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) for ordinary (commercial) banks (Basel II, Basel III), the US Federal Reserve System is completely bankrupt...

01.04.2015

Valentin KATASONOV

D.Sc. (Economics), Economist and the chairman of the S.F. Sharapov Russian Economic Society